We are Christ’s Bride (last week): what more could we ask or imagine? Yet there’s more! If we speed-read through Ephesians (it’s only five pages!), we’ll find one profound image of the Church succeeding another as Paul labours to express our destiny. Grasp Ephesians and we grasp the glory of Church – utterly vital if we are to have strength for working through the inadequacies of local churches that are the chrysalis of that glory!
So this wonderful book enriches our hearts with another picture: we Church are Christ’s Body (1:22-23, 2:15-16, 4:11-16, 5:28-30), joined eternally with Him as the extension of His personality on earth. Christ is this Body’s head (see also Col 1:18, 2:19), and we are His fullness (1:23): His chosen expression, His `overflow`; His supremely ordained `genre’ through which His goodness and grace and love overflow into the world. Let’s absorb this vision: we Church are not what we appear! On earth there is, in the end, only one Church, one living Body; made up only of those who are believers and love and follow Jesus, but made up of all believers. The Church isn’t a human organization existing merely on a sociological level (many of Her members are in the next life already); She is a supernatural, living organism, sharing the glory of Christ Her head. And we are tightly joined together at a level far deeper than we can understand: when you and I were `born again` a miracle happened, we were joined permanently both to Jesus and to every other Christian (whether we like it or not!); and together we are the body through which Jesus walks and acts on earth…
It’s important for us to grasp that this Body is already a reality. The divisions that human beings carve into its skin are only externalities. Whatever our culture, century or “denomination”, Danish Lutherans, Welsh Calvinists, Nigerian charismatics, Dallas Baptists, Vineyard, Brethren, Pentecostals, we are being `built together to become a dwelling-place in which God lives by his Spirit’ (2:22): the Body is One now, and we shall be so throughout eternity. (Still, as we read that `built together’ we see why 1 John, and the Lord’s Prayer, make clear that closeness to God depends on good relations with our brothers. It’s likewise difficult to avoid the feeling, from the flow of Paul’s argument in 1 Cor 11:17-34, that the central Christian experience of communion is designed, among other things, to refocus our awareness of this Body, as we partake together of that bread that also `is my Body’. We remember Christ’s Body broken for us in the past (v24), but Paul would have us also take care to remember the Body all too easily broken now by actions such as vv20-22. Note the `So then…’ in v33, which seems to express (at least in one part) what he means by `without recognising the Body of the Lord’ in v29.) Spirituality is incompatible with an unforgiving spirit; the peace of God is essential to life in the Body. (Lord, please help me see where that applies to me!)
There’s masses in the new testament about this; God the Holy Spirit is excited about it! Four more things are crucial for us to grasp about the Body, particularly from ch4 of Ephesians. First, its combination of unity and diversity. Paul is enthusiastic about the unity that God is creating, and 4:1-6 emphasize maintaining unity — cultivating kindness and mutual forgiveness, prayerfully shunning bitterness and slander (and cf 5:29). The forceful `Make every effort’ to maintain the Body’s oneness in 4:3 is in fact the climax of his whole argument in chapters 2 and 3. Yet this unity does not imply a colourless uniformity that blots out the individual. Instead – and this harmony is another reason why Ephesians is so life-giving – amidst the unity emphasis, the individual becomes crucial. In this marvellous organism each of us is a unique and crucial `gift` from God to His church (4:8,11); `to each one of us’ God has given a part to play (v7), every one of us has something indispensable to DO in expressing Jesus on earth; in evangelism, and in worship, and in discipling, and in caring. We’re the `overflow` of Jesus! Christ expresses Himself through each of us in individual, diverse ways, and the Body only grows as `joined and held together by every supporting ligament… as each part does its work’ (this is how the section finishes, v16).
So God’s design involves innumerable sources of individual input building up His Body, each with something indispensable to contribute. There is evidently, for example, a plurality of evangelists, a plurality of pastor-teachers (v11); the local church is to be `built up in love’ by many diverse insights and different approaches. Again, these principles are very evident over in 1 Corinthians, where 14:29-31 encourages this same plurality of input and insights to build up the local church (something too few congregations succeed in developing). And then 14:36 underlines the importance of cross-fertilization with the wider Church.
For we’re built to need these multiple insights on broader levels too, of course. Creating cross-fertilization between different traditions is one of the most valuable things the student Christian Unions in IFES/UCCF, and also the national Evangelical Alliances, have contributed to the Church. This is why it’s worth going occasionally to a different Bible-believing church to learn! And increasing intercultural contacts are bringing even greater mutual blessing, since other cultures (and indeed agegroups, classes, personality types) have different `glasses` and grasp quickly what we do not. Practically, once we grasp this, it will motivate us to a deliberate quest to receive from every other Bible-committed believer we know. I ask myself now: what would I have learnt about prayer and faith, if it were not for lessons via African sisters and brothers? (It’s also a thoughtprovoking moment when an African friend says, `We Africans would never do that!`) Or about awe at God’s majesty, if not for time with Russians and Belarussians? We’re built for the Body, and it is only `with all the saints’ that we can be filled to the fullness of God, as Paul says (3:18-19, cf 4:12-13). Diversity is the glory of Christ’s Body (see again 1 Corinthians 12), and God wants every flavour to be included in his triumphant final synthesis (Rev 7:9-10). So every culture, class, agegroup, personality type has something to give; and without a hunger to learn, from every other Bible-committed member of the Body, there will be needless limits to our growth…
This vision of the kaleidoscopic input we need has been tragically neglected in the Church’s history. Sadly, the Reformation failed to take a tough enough look at the idea of the `minister’, and carried into the new era the notion of a local church having just one `priest’; despite the insistence of, say, 1 Peter 2:9, that all God’s people are priests. It’s astonishing – and impoverishing – to hear believers today describe just one church member as `our priest’! Next time someone asks you, Who are the ministers in your church, who are the people who make it happen? – the correct answer is `I am!`- because (Eph 4:16) we are a body, we grow through every believer’s contribution, and biblically the body only grows `as each part does its work’. (Look also at 1 Cor 12:20-22!) The result of this Reformation failure was that, for many Protestant churches, `body-life’ amounted to little more than watching a single performer, just like in the middle ages. The vision of Ephesians is radically different: the Body `built up in love` by different, diverse insights & approaches, where everyone matters, and every member of the Body has a part to play. Yes: no one is dispensable, in evangelism, or in worship, or in discipling, or in caring…
And then, the goal of all this is important. Our purpose as an individual gift from God to His Church is not simply to do things for passive reception by others. Rather (see, explicitly, Eph 4:12), all the gifts (eg leaders) are there to mobilise, encourage, equip and stretch others of God’s people to move ahead in `works of service`. (Personally I’d see the allusion in Matthew 25:27 to `bankers’ as referring to this kind of leader, who develops others’ gifts and enables them to work.) Which means, incidentally, that a goal of everyone in the Body is, when the right time comes (not before!), to work themselves out of a job. As Roger Mitchell put it in the IFES magazine IN TOUCH: `It’s like 2 Timothy 2: sharing the things you’ve been taught with other people who will pass them on to others again: training someone, making yourself redundant, and moving on’ – so that those to whom the leader has ministered know everything (s)he does and can take over, and (s)he can go off and build something fresh elsewhere. (And when there is nowhere left to go, of course, the End will come: Matthew 24:14.) This is a vision that can transform our whole approach to ministry – and be a powerful stimulus to the Body’s growth. Lord, please deliver me from an unChristlike holding on to my own place and power; teach me how to work with You in this process; help me trust You enough to carefully replace myself, to work myself out of a job…
But then the other astounding thing here in Eph 4:12-13 is the longterm goal of the Body’s development: `to equip His people for works of service, so that the Body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature; attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ`! God is knitting us together into a vast, worshipping body, millions of diverse individuals each unique, mature and indispensable, that will love God, love each other, grow and serve together and be loved by God forever. And this world has to be the arena where the Church goes through that maturing process; some aspects of it (for some inevitably can be a bit difficult and painful, Heb 12:10-12) can’t happen in the next life. Doctrinal teaching and theology likewise aren’t merely for the sake of acquiring abstract knowledge (if they become so they are clearly inauthentic), but so that we may `grow up into Christ’ (4:15).
And we can’t imagine how glorious all this will be in the end. We’ve a long way to go, but this is the vision; this is where we’re going, this is what ultimate unity with Jesus has to mean; because God delights to share all He has and is with His Bride. Paul phrases it here in an astonishing way. In the end, he says, God has predestined us collectively to `become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ’ (4:13; see also Rom 8:29), with all of His love, and joy, and power for goodness flowing out through us. (`That you may be filled with all the fullness of God’, says Eph 3:19-20; surely that will necessitate eternity!) This idea takes a certain amount of believing. Revelation 3:21’s way of putting it is equally difficult: we will share His throne, says Jesus, `just as I sat down with my Father on his throne’. (`Just as’? Lord?) But this is what ultimate unity and divine companionship finally mean; this is the Bride’s, the Body’s, destiny; this is heaven!
And Ephesians has still more! So, more about us – Church – being God’s `workmanship` (2:10), next week…!
